


warmer than sunlight

by Skyepilot



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alien Technology, Eating, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Healing Sex, Mirror Sex, Reality Bending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 05:03:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13182936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/pseuds/Skyepilot
Summary: Written for #cousywinter for the prompt: mirror sex.  Daisy was in the arena, and she wakes up somewhere else.





	warmer than sunlight

She wakes up in darkness.

The last things she remembers...Does she remember? She's not sure what is real anymore.

Fighting in the arena, using her powers. Being afraid to let them see what her powers can do. Being afraid of herself.

Then, darkness.

Sitting up, she feels around her, quickly, quietly, and touches something, sees the lights in the room rise, just a hint of illumination.

A box, it's a box, some kind of chamber. She lifts her hands towards the wall to test whether her powers will be useful.

"Daisy? What are you doing?"

From inside the sliver of light coming from the wall, she recognizes the voice, and breathes an audible sigh of relief.

"Coulson?"

His voice sounds tightly wound, anxious, but it calms her, it makes her think about controlling her heartbeat, her breathing.

Even if it's another kind of trick, use it, she thinks, as she feels herself settle.

"Daisy, what's the last thing you remember?" he asks her, opening the door wider and she can see his face, half shaved.

"In the arena...fighting," she says, glancing at her surroundings again. She's on a bed, wearing her clothes.

The room is just a white box. It reminds her of being back at the Playground. After Hive.

"That's right," he tells her, entering the room and touching a panel to raise the lights higher.

There's a little pain when she smiles at seeing him standing at the end of the bed, and she puts a hand to her face and feels the stiffness in her shoulder as well.

"Where are we?" she asks, as he walks to the wall and touches the surface. "Is the team safe? The other Inhumans?!"

"They're safe. The team is here, just not in this room."

It slides open, then when he pushes a few buttons, it produces a cup of something warm. She can see the steam.

She tries to smile again as he hands it to her, then sits at the edge of the bed. "Where Kasius and the others can't find us."

"Is this because of my powers?" she asks, trying to take a sip. "Because I'm the Destroyer of Worlds?" Her hands are shaking.

He looks over her face and then leans forward, putting his hand on her uninjured arm lightly. "No," he says with a shake of his head.

Her eyes grow wider as his hand starts to feel heavier, and something inside her feels like it might burst when he stands up and walks to the wall and pushes at it.

The motion he makes is almost like when they would use the holo display back on Earth.

The walls swing outward there is a rustle of treetops and a fog settling below it that makes it almost look like they're in a city in the clouds, the stars bright above.

"Are we in the Framework?" she asks, a flatness lingering in her voice, betraying her feelings about the idea.

"No," he turns back towards her again, smiling, the moonlight hitting the unshaven half of his face. "It's real. It's a place where people go that don't want to be found. Are you hungry?"

"I'm always hungry," she sighs, wishing she had somewhere to put her cup and noticing a shelf slide out of the wall. She slowly sets it down on the surface.

"It anticipates what you want based on your thoughts," he explains, and goes to the replicator in the wall again, as food arrives there.

"Grilled cheese," she half-laughs. "Did you program it with the secret ingredient?"

"It can read my mind," he reminds her.

"Are you hungry?" she asks, holding out the plate back out to him.

"Sure, a little," he says, as he peels away half of the sandwich and takes it in his hand. "Thanks," he says with a small smile.

Then he starts to explain.

Enoch. The white Monolith.

  
###

  
When she wakes again, she tries to not panic this time, even though the lights are low, it's not complete darkness.

Coulson is next to her on the bed, turned away. She had asked him to stay and he agreed, even though his room is connected to hers somehow.

It must be because that's what he wanted. She is curious about how this alien tech might work, it's rules. What if someone wants something bad? It's the perfect prison without thinking they're imprisoned.

She leans over, trying to get a better look at him when the ceiling above her changes, like moving liquid, and she sees the image of them mirrored back. Of them sharing the same bed and it's weird, but not in the way she expected it to be.

He doesn't have a half-beard now, this face is clean shaven and he's wearing a t-shirt, like what he would sleep in if they were at the base.

What if she just thought of him being here and it just made this version of him _for_ her?

But she's wearing her damaged clothes, although her boots are off now, sitting to the side of the bed on the floor, neatly, like someone put them there.

Then she concentrates, trying to make it disappear, to make the reflection at least go away in case he-

Coulson shifts and turns on his back and tucks the pillow in under his head when she sees his eyes flicker open, then stay open.

"You shaved," she mentions to him, trying to divert the subject to something conversational, instead of the awkward staring contest they're now engaged in.

He still doesn't reply, he looks focused, and a little intense, and she's definitely seen Coulson looking at her before, but not him looking at them together, like he's trying to work some kind of puzzle.

"Huh."

And as she turns and shifts to her side to make her escape, she can feel his eyes on her back.

She licks her lips against the sudden dryness, and slowly turns to lay facing up again, lifting her head to get it comfortable on the pillow as she gazes upward.

"It's different, looking from the outside."

Her face does look a bit beaten up, so does his. They look like kind of a mess, almost like they match, and it seems too real to even be real.

"Are you sure this is real?" she asks him.

His head turns away from staring at them to looking over at her. And even in the dim light, she can see how earnest his expression is. Apologetic.

"I wish I could say definitively. I'm not sure anymore. But, I'm also not sure it matters right now. I trust the people trying to help us."

"It's the only thing left that I haven't screwed up. Yet," she says, staring up at him with a lump in her throat. "Although, as you know I've tried my best."

"You can't screw this up," he tells her, promising, then faces up to look at them together again. "Not even if you tried."

The thought of that makes her smile, even if it hurts. That he would even think he could promise such a thing in a place like this.

That it would mean so much to her that he did, anyway.

She watches her fingers slip down his wrist until her hand is resting on his.

Then his fingers curl around hers, holding them.

The lights go dim again.

  
###

 

She is not sure how you measure time here, but daylight is streaming in through the window and crossing the floor to land over her legs.

It's noticeably warmer where it touches her body, and she feels a different warmth along her back, too, and she can hear Coulson breathing behind her and glances up at the ceiling and sees that he's kicked off the shimmery looking sheets where the light is touching him.

Coulson's legs are new visual territory, and they're nice legs.

She's having that same reckoning that her feelings for Coulson aren't like trying to work a puzzle out. They never have been, she just made sure he was not available to screw up like everything else in her life.

It looks almost _normal_ , like this is the way she would like to wake up for once, and she fights with the idea that she's just creating all of this.

This, instead of being the Destroyer of Worlds.

"Hi."

Her eyes dart up to see his reflection smirking at her and she sits up in the bed and stares down at him as he shifts to give her some space, and studies her expression, his eyes softening at the corners and looking a little sleepy still.

"I guess I wanted it to be morning?" she says, her own voice a little rumbling as she still wakes.

He yawns, and turns over his shoulder to look out past the open doors. "This is a real place. It just a door opening to it. It's nice. Peaceful. You must have wanted that, too."

Simmons would undoubtedly compare this to the Tardis. But outside of the room, it almost reminds her of Afterlife, before it was destroyed.

He shifts again and looks at her like he might be thinking of dozing back off again. "I guess we can't stay here forever."

"No," she replies, and lowers her eyes, wondering about how they're going to get to Lady Basha, find out how the Kree got to their past and changed everything into this, how she stops it-

"Daisy," he calls out to her again, pushing her hair back from her face with his hand, touching the pad of his thumb to her cheek. "Please. Not yet."

She lean downs over him, hesitating. A million and one doubts coming to mind. Whether she is allowed to want him like this. If they change the past, will this moment never happen?

But she kisses him tenderly despite them, then lets him shift so he can pull her into his embrace and their mouths meet again, something almost greedy in their second kiss, now that there are no doubts, as his fingers slip against the nape of her neck.

The sun is crawling further up the bed and he kisses her again, slow, languid, and opens her mouth with his tongue and her eyes close briefly, but then she glances up and watches his reflection kiss her, follows his hand slipping from her neck, down her back, to her hips, pulling her closer.

A pool of heat drops from her chest to somewhere low in her belly and he pauses to finds her eyes and the excitement of seeing their bodies together like this takes hold again.

Sliding her leg over his hip possessively, his fingers dig in harder, a little whine of frustration at the inconvenience of her clothing in the way, how their eyes are meeting as they watch each other's hands move beneath their shirts, his fingers splaying out over her breast as he raises the shirt higher.

Her mouth is almost touching his ear, and she runs her bottom lip along the edge and slips her hands beneath his underwear, watches herself squeeze his ass as he pushes his hips forward in time with her grasping movements, then moves down the bed, tugs her in closer by her pants, getting them open quickly and slipping his finger inside first, and then his tongue following after eagerly.

She says his name like a praise, wrapping a hand around his neck and then combing her nails across his scalp with the other, his breath shuddering in excitement, like it could be just at the taste of her.

Her expression mirrored above her is not a version of herself she's ever seen. It should be silly, but it's not. It's hot. Watching his face buried between her legs is amazing, the line of his jaw and the way his bottom lip looks so red as it presses in against her bare skin. She wants even more and pulls his shirt by the collar as he lifts his arms and lets it slip up over him, locking eyes with her again for a moment.

His shoulders and arms bare, his muscles tightening as he draws her hips up around his shoulders tugging her pants further down, the trace of the scar along his shoulder blade. It's almost like seeing him for the first time and she feels possessive of it, like she might even be powerful enough to protect this.

Just this one thing.

She tries to keep her eyes open when she comes, but they shut tight. She can see the glow behind her eyelids.  Feel him kiss the insides of her thighs and hears the echo of his words, "Please. Not yet."

And when they open, he's smiling up at her, warmer than sunlight.


End file.
